Hey John, can you do a post about tectonic and atectonic compositions in cartoons? I think most of the compositions you've posted are tectonic, i.e., all the negative and positive shapes are like puzzle pieces.

Sorry, I meant the last picture has no Hierarchy of control, it seems to be pretty flat with no definition on where the characters are moving to, it's pretty loose and it doesn't use the panel space efficiently.

The last pic by another artist doesn't have any room to breathe, so not enough negative space to separate the elements. Eisenberg on the other hand has a good amount to provide clarity. It looks like the artist was trying to frame the dragon using the silhouette of the castle, but again there is not enough space provided so it gets overlooked.

It looks like the crowd of people on the left could point to the dragon, but Snagglepuss has been placed right in the middle destroying the overall directional shape.

John K said...This last one is another artist. It has no composition. Why?

everything is too evenly set together, nothing sticks out. The people in the crowd are mixed with the main characters and the buildings clutter up the background. The main characters ain't pushed into being the main focus.

Speaking in a purely technical sense, isn't Boo Boo just a WEE bit too close to Yogi in that first picture?

I'm still learning to analyze these drawings, and I think that Yogi's butt and Boo Boo's bow tie create line tangents, yes? Would it read better if Boo Boo was placed just a hair further to the right of the frame?

That's an amazing contrast in compositions. The most obvious thing for me is that the dragon doesn't fit within higher-level forms. It splits the overall frame in two separate pieces and there's nothing behind it to hold it all together. (No structural hierarchy)

It has almost no negative space. The Eisenberg compositions have lots of negative space that the important characters extend into.

Also there's no hierarchy of detail. Every part of the frame has the same amount of detail; eg. the cross-hatched windows in the buildings, background characters, foreground characters. The whole thing is cluttered and there is no graceful flow for the eye. Eisenberg leaves huge areas devoid of fine details. (The colors don't help either -- distant buildings are brightly colored while distant trees in the Eisenberg blend softly into the background.)

Even the smaller elements (in a hierarchical sense) lack composition. For example the row of five people behind the dragon. There's no pleasing shape to the group as a whole.

this is all really interesting stuff. My classmate, John is always saying how great John K's lessons are. I'm going to have to back track and go through the lessons myself. I don't know enough technically about composition.